ABSTRACT
The last four chapters have been very critical, and I now want to change direction. It would be quite in order to ask why, given what I have had to say, is it worth spending the time and energy to fi nd out anything about structuration theory? Why, in fact, is Giddens worth reading? There are a number of very positive answers to this question, and the fi rst one is that it is diffi cult now to think of social theory, or sociology itself, without Giddens. There is a sense in which his work provides a centre for the discipline. And, for all the criticisms I have made of the project of synthesis, it is none the less an important, essential project.
